Pushing Sitecore to the limits and beyond

With the release for WFFM 2.5 for Sitecore 7.5; SQL server is no longer supported (see release notes) as each time a form is submitted it automatically saves the form data in the xDB (MongoDB) and associates it with the current contact (used to be called visitor).

I believe MongoDB is a much better choice than SQL for storing non-structured data that is generated by WFFM and in addition it can also be used to tailor the experience to the current contact (visitor) i.e. don’t show them the form if they have already filled it out, etc.

Problem

Unfortunately I have a number of customers that want to upgrade to Sitecore 7.5, but due to a number of business and operational reasons are not ready to migrate MongoDB. Therefore they wish to continue storing their form data in the existing SQL database.

Solution

I decided to create a simple SQL provider for WFFM 2.5, that would allow customers to continue saving/retrieving data frm the existing SQL database.

It was my intention to port the forms report viewer from a previous version, but the architecture has changed considerably to accommodate xDB and it would have required me to re-code and override a lot of classes. In addition there were a number of UI control libraries that the forms report viewer relies upon which are no longer used/bundled with Sitecore 7.5.

Therefore I intended to implement the ability to down load the data for a given form as an CSV file. So the data can be analysed and sorted using Excel, which in my experience is how the majority of customers used WFFM data.

Installation

Install the WFFM.SQLServer.SaveToDatabase-1.4.zip package, note you prompted that the Save to database item already exists, select overwrite and aply, see below

Ensure the WFM.ConnectionString settingin /app_config/include/Sitecore.Forms.config is set to the name of the connection string for the WFFM SQL database i.e.

Like previous version of WFFM you use the “Save To Database” action to save the submitted form data to the SQL database. The SaveToDatabase action is still /sitecore/system/Modules/Web Forms for Marketers/Settings/Actions/Save Actions/Save to Database. In fact it is the same item from previous versions, so all existing forms that use the SaveToDatabase action will continue to work without making any changes.

The only change is that class is WFFM.SQLServer.SaveToDatabase.Infrastructure.Actions.SaveToDatabase, from the WFFM.SQLServer.SaveToDatabase assembly.

Retrieve data for a given Form

To Insert new form data and retrieve data there is a FormReposiotry class which has a Get function to retrieve a list of form data for a given form id, seee below

Hi,
is this module supposed to show the existing data from the SQL server DB when user view Reporting? After I installed this module, the reporting does not show the existing data from the older version of Webforms. The export to CSV works fine and does have the existing WF data.

No it is not the intention that the reporting will show the SQL data, it was only meant as a temporary way to export the existing SQL data and continue to use the SQL database if you do not use MongoDB (I have a number of customers where operations for a number of reasons will not setup MongoDB)
Hope this helps, if not let me know 🙂

We are planning to use WFFM 2.5. We are not using Sitecore Analytics (xDB) – it is disabled in our instance. Can we still use WFFM 2.5 with your module? We are on Sitecore 7.5 and I read in the documentation of WFFM 2.5 that Enabled experience analytics is a prerequisite for WFFM 2.5.

Since you mentioned lot of your customer are not ready for MongoDB, I’m guessing they have analytics disabled and are using the WFFM 2.5 with your module. Just want to confirm if people are using WFFM 2.5 in prod with experience analytics disabled.

Though the Export To CSV functionality works great, however the current library does not support customization as all the classes involved are marked either internal or private and cannot be inherited. In our case our CMS server is shared for production and preview environment and we need to switch our connection strings while exporting data. For that purpose we required a bit of tweaking.

We are upgrading from Sitecore 7.2 to Sitecore 8.2 and currently in process of upgrading to WFFM 8.2. We are not using Sitecore Analytics (xDB) – it is disabled in our instance. We were using WFFM 2.3 with Sitecore 7.2 instance and everything was working as expected with SQL Server database.

We would like to use WFFM 8.2 with Sitecore 8.2. Can we use this module in this implementation?